Clouds
by Be Summer Rain
Summary: He hadn't been laughing this much before, and his children knew it.


Author's Note: I fully intend to complete September, but I wanted to write something different – I needed an angst outlet as well. I used five different word prompts and wrote drabbles around that word; they're not arranged chronologically or anything, except for the last. I probably won't be around for a bit, as I'm moving to another country (well, Canada, but it sounds more impressive the first way) in less than a week. Enjoy, but don't kill me, 'cause I don't _really _ship them.

Clouds

-

_Children_

-

"You have beautiful children," she says, rolling over.

He smiles. "I know," he replies, always a little boastful, and she finds that she doesn't mind quite as much as she did in the beginning.

"It's good that you can see them so often," she continues, watching his face for warning signs.

"Yeah," he says. "And I think they like you."

She breathes a sigh of relief. "I'm glad."

-

Neither of them speak of what she has come to think of as The Moment. All he had told them was that he wanted them to meet someone special to him; Kathy was dating again, so they weren't surprised. They arrived at his door, cheerful and bubbly, and when she pulled the door open silence rang in her ears.  
Kathleen was the first to speak. "You're not Olivia," she said, a trace of belligerance in her voice.

"Good call, Kath," said Maureen, rolling her eyes. "You're the ADA, right? Ms. Novak?" She extended her hand, having prodded her siblings through the door.

"Yes," she says in relief. "But you can call me Casey."

Lizzie shrugged. "Okay," she said, barreling towards the door when she saw her father coming.

"Hey, sweetheart," he said, scooping her up and just as quickly setting her back on the floor. "Getting a little too old for that," he said, laughing. He hadn't been laughing this much before, and his children knew it.

-

Casey would never hear about this, but Maureen had asked about her later that evening. "No offense, Dad," she said, "she's nice and all, but I guess…we always figured it would be Olivia."

He didn't tell her that he had always thought the same. "That's not necessarily the way these things work, honey," he said, and she rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, I know that," she told him. "I am, technically, an adult -"

"Ugh," said her father, covering his eyes, "don't say that! You make me feel old."

She grinned. "So you don't have to sugarcoat it. I guess we were just wrong or something, but you could give me a bit more substantial of an reply than 'that's not how things work.'"

"Get out of here," he said, swatting at her arm and dodging the question, because he didn't know if he could find the answer.

-

"Lizzie's really sweet," continues Casey. "I don't think Dickie's thrilled at the prospect of having to hang around even more girls, though."

Elliot laughs, a little awkwardly. "Poor guy." He closes his eyes.

_West_

When Casey was younger, she always though that she would live in the West. She had no romantic notions of cowboys and cattle, nor images of surfing and celebrities. It was the spirit that drew her, the laidback attitude, the dry heat and salt on her lips, and the mountains. Always mountains in the distance, and growing up where she could see for miles around by standing in her front yard, she wished for something to ground her.

Now, of course, she's working in the East, as far from that life as she could possibly be. She can't say when things changed, and is almost glad of that. She doesn't need a pivotal moment to dwell on, nor a coming-of-age story; she only knows that her perceptions changed and twisted over themselves until here she is, sitting in her office looking at the scarred New York skyline. And she has found that she's grown to love this world, to skyscrapers and subways and a peculiar sort of beauty that can only be found in ashes.

_Whiskey_

"How about a drink?" he asks, and she accepts out of the weariness of refusal. He turns to his partner. "Want to join us?"

Casey wants to melt away right then and there, like the Wicked Witch doused with water, and she cannot believe that he doesn't realize how badly he phrased that. And then the next second she wonders if he does realize, or if maybe she's just paranoid after all these years of working with this unit.

Olivia glances up, dark eyes passing over Casey's face, then turns her face back to her paperwork. "No," she says, "I'm busy," but Casey does not believe her and Elliot is not listening.

-

He orders whiskey, a harder drink than he normally would have taken, because lately every action he takes seems fraught with danger. And as it spills down his throat words bubble up in the other direction. He was always a confessional drunk.

Casey sips at her beer, more relaxed that she thought she would have been, and listens to him ramble. "She doesn't see how much I care, y'know?" he says finally, looking up at Casey.

"She would die for you," she tells him, because she knows that this is what she is supposed to say.

"That's different," he says, shaking his head, "that's work."

"And this is?" she asks, because suddenly she needs to know the answer more than she's needed to know anything in her life.

His eyes slide down to her lips. "This is whatever you want it to be."

"I think you've had enough," she tells him quietly, and motions for the bill.

As they leave, he drapes his arm over her shoulders, and she does not remove it as she knows she ought to. He stops and faces her. "I've been watching you," he tells her, looking straight into her eyes.

"Elliot," she says, more firmly now, "you're drunk."

"I don't care," he says. "I won't regret this in the morning." And he leans over – she's even taller tonight than he always thought, somehow – and presses his lips lightly to hers.

She pulls away after a moment, but she knows that, like him, she will not regret this single whiskey kiss in the morning.

_Bloom_

He had always thought that he preferred the earthly, regardless of hymns and high holy days and incense swinging to the rafters. Earth was simple and straightforward; you put seeds in the ground and if you watered them properly you got flowers. Earth was life, and earth, he imagines, has brown eyes. He always felt vaguely blasphemous for saying this, but he sometimes thought that heaven might be boring. He had no patience for harps and sitting on clouds.

But tonight, as he reaches for her hand and pulls her closer, as he whispers in her ear that he can see her bursting into bloom before his very eyes, ready for flight, that she was never meant for this world, he supposes that heaven might not be so bad after all. Then he chastises himself for sounding like a Hallmark movie, but can't help but think that the last light of evening plays on her hair like a halo.

_Gray_

Neither of them can see the world in black and white; she thinks that perhaps this is what holds them together. "Life is in between," her mother told her once, though she doesn't often think of her mother. Law should be clear cut, but as in most professions, there are always gray areas, and the gray is where things got interesting. Where the battles were.

You shouldn't date coworkers. One rule she almost always stuck to, though she doesn't think that Jordan really counted. But was Elliot necessarily a coworker? He wasn't a lawyer, after all; she's learned that lesson painfully well. She has never been so unsure as to where to draw the line.

"This isn't a good idea," she tells him one evening in the space he gives her to breathe.

"Why not?" he wants to know.

"Work," she says, and leans the slightest bit away from him.

"It's not like we're partners," he tells her, and she recoils even farther.

"No," she says evenly, "it's not. So I guess you can date me, since you can't have her."

"That's not what I meant and you know it," he says, though truthfully he's not sure of either.

"She knows, Elliot," she says, staring urgently into his eyes. The women always do.

He laughs. "How could she?"

"She knows," Casey repeats, though she cannot explain why this matters so much to her.

"Does it bother you?" he asks, and she has to admit that it does.

"We're friends. It's awkward."

"Why would it be awkward?" he asks, grinning to lighten the mood. "I can have a personal life, after all."

She nods; she knows this is true. But things are different between them, and she can't quite say why.

"It's you I want to be with," he tells her, and this is mostly true. But he cannot speak to Casey about Olivia, and he himself does not fully understand how things became so tense between them, thick and stifling until what he needed most was space to breate. If only for a night.

She smiles hesitantly into his face, and sees blue eyes clouded with gray.

(the end)


End file.
